Why CIID?

That murmur.

Can you hear it? In the beginning it was an inaudible utterance, like a group of people speaking at a distance. But has been growing for years, louder and louder all the time. Now, sometimes it’s so loud I can barely think… I can’t focus, I can’t rest.

Sometimes it’s like a electric buzz… the rumor of servos and engines revolving at incredible speeds. Swarms of über-cheaps drones flying together in complex formations while the software installed in a remote computer controls their movements. I can imagine the lines of code running on their tiny brains, dutifully adjusting their destination to 64.150596,-21.956474. I can almost understand what they trying to tell me.

But the murmur becomes unintelligible again. It grows into a deafening humming of new, strange interactions: a mess of machines printing another machines, of software embodied in things that are not computers, of public spaces that are not passive containers anymore, of digital ghosts leaking into reality… Oh God, if only the noise wasn’t so loud.

But more than anything else, that noise is the sound of a wall collapsing in front of us. It’s the tremor of the digital and physical tectonic plates shifting, creating new mountains and valleys packed with the children of a new aesthetic that we are still creating. How can we interact with them? How can we talk with them? Do they even need us?

For a long time it was pretty clear that the software we were creating was made by lines of code, that the context for using it was that screen in front of us -the PC- and that the users of our work were very much other human beings.

Now I look around me and I have no idea what anything is or does anymore. Software is the mythological hydra turned digital, turned invisible, turned ubiquitous, turned anything and everything, anywhere and everywhere. The way software is constantly permeating through our society, our culture, our civilization is much deeper than what we used to think. The murmur will not stop.

I would like to attend CIID Summer School to understand that murmur.

Why me?

Learning by doing.

The CIID Summer School 2012 mini-site says that the Institute follows this philosophy. Me too.

I’ve been writing code for a living for more than 14 years and one of the things I’ve learnt in this time, is that no matter how beautiful, ugly, complex or simple the inner workings of a technology are, what defines our behavior is the interactions we shape on it.

I want to learn to create better interactions, better experiences, different experiences and I’m prepared to apply that new knowledge to my work. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that I will not be able to create great products or services in the next years without having a better knowledge of how great interactions are created.

I think that my previous experience in some areas like development, marketing or management can be useful to create a balanced group in the Summer School and I’ll be happy to share what I know at the same time I learn in new areas.

Five years ago I cofounded Linking Paths, a web company obsessed with creating simple and useful web applications. I’ve learnt a lot of things in this time, but I refuse to be only one thing. I’m not happy being “a developer” anymore; the tag has become constraining, dehumanizing. I refuse to accept a monochrome version of myself that spans my interests or capabilities only to a few areas.

Specialization is for insects, and I want to be a human.

Absurdly in love with high quality, long lasting products, I cofounded Jositajosi with my wife in 2009, a small company that makes awesome sleeves for that shiny gadgets you carry with you everywhere.

Our society is becoming software-based and, as consequence, a few years ago I founded Pro Bono Publico, the main advocate of Open Data in Spain and organizer of AbreDatos, a 48h hackaton to develop open source public services.

Born in that small, beautiful corner of the world called Basque Country, I’m currently living in Reykjavík, Iceland, where I keep marvelling at how awesome my wife is, how short is our life and how full of challenges the World is these days.